by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 28, 2012 | Allotment
Every year it happens – you have loads of jobs to do over winter and tons of time to do them. Well, December is busy so we’ll definitely start after Christmas. January is too cold, so we’ll wait. February, well we’ll just give the plot a bit of tidy and then crack on with the jobs. Ah oh well, it’s now almost April and our worthy list of jobs remains mostly untouched!
With that being said we’ve had a great couple of days at the plot. Philippa managed to get in some sneaky midweek plot time and used it well by digging over a patch of ground that had the netting on for the cabbages last year. I cannot complete big jobs like this – I get bored very easily and move onto other jobs, returning to do other bits during the day. I get there eventually, but Pilla managed to do it in one go. Pilla also helped out relaying car park number 2 with the regular gang of volunteers on Saturday whilst I was out on my long run (if you wanted to sponsor me my page is http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/neilwilkinson – thanks!).
On Sunday we got to the plot very early – Pilla had an idea to have breakfast there, so we tucked into a very tasty bacon sandwich and cup of tea outside, food is always better that way! We then got on with a few jobs, Pilla potted on some of the tomato seeds we had germinated inside, they had got very leggy but tomato’s quite like being planted deep, so you can recover leggy seedlings pretty easily! I dug over the last bit of plot that needed it. It’s quite therapeutic – every time you pull a piece of mares tail root out you think “yesss, one less this year!” Hopefully we might be able to borrow Bob’s rotavator at some point coming up to cheat at making our soil as fine as his! I also weeded the asparagus bed. So far we have not taken a single spear home and judging by the paltry state of the plants last year I don’t think we’ll have any this year either.
So spring is definitely here, our fruit trees are only a couple of weeks away from blossoming and we have things growing in the ground. The weather has been beautiful all week, from a running point of view I want the weekend coming up to be cool, slightly damp and overcast. From an allotment point of view I’d like more sun please! One final note Bob has planted his potatoes, as Bob is our official ‘if he’s done it, we should probably do it now’ allotmenter, we’ll probably put those in next weekend!
by Philippa | Jul 14, 2011 | Allotment
I have decided that I am not going to bow, or call him Chairman or Mr President, no matter how often he asks. Following the AGM today Neil was elected as Chair of the Society. This was mainly due to the lack of willing volunteers when it came time to re-elect, but he does have plenty of enthusiasm!
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The AGM did not take very long, nothing very controversial. We then had a Sow and Grow event, with planters of compost to plant up with seedlings of lettuce, cucumber, tomato and radish, so that people could learn how to plant them and take something away to nurture at home.
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The weather was a bit hit and miss for most of the day, but it didn’t get in the way too much as most of the jobs we were doing were tidying, plot admin sort of tasks. We made two visits to the tip with all the bags of rubbish, glass and other general junk that had been cluttering the place up since we got the new plot. This alone made a huge difference. We also tidied our spare plant pots that had been hanging around on the old plot and gave the shed a good tidy, it really looks like we are on top of things. Perfect timing as the allotment competition judge will be doing the rounds in the next couple of weeks, fingers crossed this will get us extra points!
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Both sets of rhubarb needed all the dead leaves removing, as it made them look like they were on their last legs, so they look a bit perkier now and can concentrate on growing for next year. The broad beans that were in over winter had finished producing pods so Neil dug them up and covered the cleared area with some of our compost. I think he used three wheelbarrows full and it all looked really good quality and had a fine, crumbly consistency. I think it’s fair to say we are pretty proud of our compost (geeks!). The second lot of broad beans we put out as a bit of a punt have started to produce pods, so we may actually have successfully extended the season pretty well.
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I potted on the melon plants that were in the old greenhouse and put the watermelon plants into the cold frame. Next time I’ll plant them outside, which surprised me as I imagined they would need to stay in a greenhouse, and they like having a ridge to grow up so a bit of digging will be required. I also planted some more savoy cabbage seeds. It may well end up being far too late but the plants that we have so far have spent too long in the greenhouse while we were away on honeymoon etc and so I don’t think they will be great, so I’ll try to catch some up and put them out as soon as possible and see what happens.
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Next week we will be looking at planting any of the late sowing varieties we have, such as peas and beans.
by Neil Wilkinson | Jun 13, 2010 | Allotment
You know it’s summer when you have your first strawberries, when you can can a BBQ without it raining and when the England football team are playing badly – all three of which happened on Saturday.
Saturday afternoon at the allotment was great, we celebrated the nice weather with our first allotment bbq – featuring our own produce and some homemade burgers from home – delicious! Before we could tuck into that we did have some work to do. Pilla planted out the courgettes across both plots and weeded a fair bit of plot 118.
I spent a while in the greenhouse attaching the tomatoes to their supports, it doesn’t seem that long ago we planted them on but a couple had go so big they had toppled over a bit. On Sunday we had another move about in the greenhouse, taking down the staging at the side of the greenhouse so we could spread the peppers and tomatoes out and attached the tomato supports to the greenhouse.
After the great weather on Saturday, the forecast was a bit more dodgy today. We managed to get a fair bit done though, Pilla had a good weed on the side of plot 97 and I planted out our cabbages over on plot 118. We had a good weed around there too, covering the onion bed and generally all over as the soil had quite a lot of little weed seedlings growing. The good news was the that rain overnight seemed to have given the beetroots some life, we were complaining two weeks ago they hadn’t germinated well, we planted some more (which have all now germinated too) and lo and behold we turn up today and there are tons of little seedlings. We’ll probably have hundreds of beetroots now! The lettuces are looking great, we’ve been taking loads off them lately (they have provided three lunches and lots of side salads with tea this week) and they are still massive.
One salad that didn’t grow well was the red spinach, it seemed to go straight from seedling to seed head, it was the fastest bolting thing we’ve ever grown. We dug it up today and replanted, I’ve read something on the Internet (which I don’t really believe, but anyway) that plants are more likely to go to seed as the days are getting longer, has the days shorted the risk recedes. We’ll see how that goes.
by Philippa | Apr 5, 2010 | Allotment
It’s suddenly very busy on the allotment – both with people working their plots and with the number of jobs we have to do! The seeds we planted out in the greenhouse have had mixed results. The sweetpeas, cauliflower, basil and oregano have sprouted but there is still no sign of life from the tomatoes. It is hard not to peer into everyone’s greenhouses to compare their results with your own at this time of year! We have brought some pots and compost home this week to start some tomato seeds here in the warm with the hope that they might get off to a quicker start.
On Sunday I was on light duties to preserve my muscles for my training walk the next day but I managed to clean the greenhouse out, which was very satisfying and had been bothering me for ages. Everything has had a good sweep down, ready for Neil to start constructing the extra staging that we will need in the next few weeks.
Neil was doing more heavy duty jobs on 118 while I was tidying, as he was cementing in some of the concrete posts using a dry mix of sand and cement. Although he was a bit worried about one of them being wonky, we checked on them today and the cement has hardened nicely and they are all pretty straight. Only seven more to go!
We had some exciting deliveries over the last week. Our onion sets arrived, two white varieties (Fen Early and Hytech) and one red (Hyred) and so we planted really long rows on 118. Only a few are showing signs of growth just yet but at least none have been plucked out by hungry birds or squirrels! Even more exciting to receive was our asparagus crowns (Backlim) as this is a new crop for us. Bob has some growing which he started from seed but we weren’t sure we had the patience (or the expertise!) for this, particularly given that it is recommended that you wait for three years before harvesting even from crowns to allow for them to get established. Neil dug a long trench in a raised bed on 118 and we then made a small mound all the way along the trench as the spidery crowns need to be supported rather than squashed flat. We had ten crowns so we planted them generously apart and filled the trench in and added a little bit of organic fertiliser to help them on their way. We are hopeful that they will be successful, especially as we didn’t really have any opportunity to carefully prepare the soil in the bed, so fingers crossed.
We will have a busy few visits over the coming weeks as the pile of seed packets ready to plant is quite large! But as for the things already growing, there were even more signs of life cropping up all over the place. Each visit we are looking forward to searching out the new bits of greenery and it is amazing how fast everything happens, so no slacking off for us!
PS Thanks to Debbie for her kind sponsorship for my walking marathon!
by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 21, 2010 | Allotment
Great day at the allotment today. The sun was out, there were lots of people, and thanks to Eddie coming down we got absolutely tons done. The plan was to move the two trees from plot 97 onto 118 and put up the posts to form the back fence whilst Pilla got on with sowing the years first seeds. We’ now have four types of sweet pea, three types of tomato (tigerella, marmande, vanessa), cauliflower, oregano, broad-beans and scabious all sown in the greenhouse. That reminds me, I need to increase our bench space in the greenhouse soon.
Soon enough the trees were moved (we should have done this a week or two ago as the trees have actually started growing again) and we had the four concrete fence posts in place. We used a dry cement mix the hold these in place, I’m not sure it is as strong as wet mix but it should be fine for an allotment fence. We then got to work sorting out the front fence, this was a bonus job – I had most of the parts but didn’t think we’d get it done today. I borrowed a couple of pieces of wood from Bob, and It’s still not quite done, but we have the rails attached to posts and a working gate – something this plot hasn’t had for a while. The nice looking sign we inherited is proudly in position on the gate.
Elsewhere, Pilla managed to dig over a huge section of the big plot and plant a couple of currant bushes that Debs kindly gave us. The plots are slowly coming back to life, some of the garlic and shallots are beginning to grow, and the raspberries have leaves growing again.
Bring on the summer!
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